


What Colour is Love?

by theharellan



Series: I Have Found a Home (Ian x Solas) [10]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Flirting, Inspired by Roleplay/Roleplay Adaptation, M/M, Other, Tumblr Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:55:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29433477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theharellan/pseuds/theharellan
Summary: “You told me once you saw promise in a sunrise. That your world is draped in shades we would not think to name with abstract concepts, not when a more immediate word comes to mind.” Awake, he sees orange before he sees hope, and the hope he sees is his alone (what little there is left). “So I ask you— what colour is love to you?”Curious, Solas asks Ian where he sees love in the world around him, eager for an indulgent answer.Archive of a Tumblr roleplay thread.
Relationships: Fen'Harel | Solas/Original Character(s), Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age)
Series: I Have Found a Home (Ian x Solas) [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/873849
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	What Colour is Love?

“What colour is love to you?” Solas asks.

It is a question which sounds abrupt in the moment, betraying what had been until that point a companionable silence. Less abrupt to Solas, who had spent the comfortable silence poking at the question. He looks to Ian, watching with an admiring eye how the embers in his pipe catch his the colour in his gaze. Belatedly he catches the puzzled slant of his brow, and realises he may need to say more on the matter.

“You told me once you saw promise in a sunrise. That your world is draped in shades we would not think to name with abstract concepts, not when a more immediate word comes to mind.” Awake, he sees orange before he sees hope, and the hope he sees is his alone (what little there is left). “So I ask you— what colour is love to you?”

* * *

“Did I say that?” Ian grins, laughter caught behind his teeth as he bites down on the stem of his pipe. He pulls the pipe from his teeth before he shakes his head, feeling color rising in his face. “I don’t–if I did, I did not say it nearly so–I did not say it nearly so prettily.”

Protestations aside, he entertains the question, swaying where he sits until he leans into Solas’s side. His cheek rests comfortably at Solas’s shoulder, and his own shoulders rise and fall with a quiet sigh as he turns his pipe between gloved fingers.

“I don’t know what color love is,” is his answer. “Any more than I know–I don’t see sunrises the right way, either. Love isn’t–love isn’t a color. If–if I said that it is easier for me to see the promise in a sunrise than the red, I did not mean to say that I think promises are red.”

* * *

“No?” he laughs at his own expense. “I seem to remember being quite taken with your turn of phrase.” Though that comes as no surprise. Ian’s words may no longer inspire the same intoxicating uncertainty as they once did, but he still hangs upon them. The Veil remains, obscuring their affection to the world around them, yet there is no doubt between them. Ian leans his weight against Solas and he does not need to ask himself whether it is as a friend or lover, nor hesitate to pillow his cheek upon Ian’s curls.

“Yet it seems some promises are,” he muses. “Be it the sunrise or the turn of the maples in autumn.” He sighs in turn, the smoke from Ian’s pipe flooding his nostrils. “But I suppose it is a half-formed question. There are many kinds of love, and so I suppose many colours it may take.”

* * *

“Perhaps some promises are red.” Ian agrees, “But red is…red is happenstance. The promise in the sunrise….the promise in the sunrise is there on dreary days, too. On mornings when…when it must shine through the mist, I don’t think it’s red.” He pauses, waiting for contradiction. “I mean, that’s not–it’s not red, then. It’s something softer. Pink, maybe. Or purple?” 

He thumbs the bell of his pipe, stifling the heat before he turns it over to tap against the heel of his boot. Leaning away from Solas for the moment it takes to clear the ash from the pipe, he wonders vaguely at the ache he feels, as though it fills the narrow void where he had been. His absence is brief, and when he returns to where he fits best he sits all the closer. He can feel the weave of Solas’s sweater against his smile as he notes: “If love is any color, surely it would depend on where one sees it.”

* * *

“Or blue,” he adds, affirming Ian’s question with a delicate nod. “There are mornings when the sun breaks through the mists without colour, somehow whiter than the cloud it bursts.”

The space beside him grows cold in Ian’s absence, though he takes the opportunity to roll the burdened shoulder in its socket. It, too, remembers his weight, albeit less kindly. The ache does not trouble him too much, however, not with Ian’s talents so near at hand. He considers Ian’s observation, an unseen smile quirks his lips as he voices the obvious question:

“And where do you see it?”

* * *

“Oh.” Solas asks the question and Ian feels something in his chest flutter and skip. Drawn into the conversation, it hadn’t occurred to him that the question might be asked. “I–I think…I don’t know that there’s a good answer.” 

Warmth floods his face, burning in vivid insistence, and he wonders if Solas can feel the heat of his blush through his sweater. “I think…I think there are so many places to see it, that it is hard to–I don’t know if I can…” Ian bites his lip, catching the rest of his words as he thinks, knowing what answer comes first to his heart and stubbornly refusing to give it voice. “There is–there is a little star at the heart of the flowers on the vines that climb the walls of the garden.” 

“They open at night, and turn to face the moon. When the moon is clouded, or–or just absent…they sleep through the night and day. It’s…I think of love, when they watch the moon. They shine, but only…but only when they can find what they most adore, and the light they give off is–is the reflection of the moon, returning their gaze.”

* * *

Solas’ world grows smaller when Ian speaks, the sounds which clutter everyday life dull in the distance. Across the Veil, he is certain he senses something lean in beside him, but then he wonders if it is his own perception which colours the subtle magics at work around them.

He sneaks an arm behind Ian’s back to thread his hand through his hair, the longest strands curling like copper rings around his fingers. Ian’s words unfold like the face of the flower he describes, considered and deliberate, even where they falter. Solas does not make a sound until he is through, a soft chuckle disturbing the even rise and fall of his chest. “If you do not wish to be branded a poet, Vhenan,” he teases, “then you ought not to speak the language of one.”

“But I do have another question, if you will indulge me.” Solas sweeps the fringe across Ian’s brow, parting the hairs that fall in his face. “Of the two of us, who is the moon and who is the flower?”

* * *

Solas accepts Ian’s answer with gentle praise, and Ian’s relief is breathed in something just a little softer than a sigh. His smile widens, off center and genuine as the heat in his face eases and he sits a little straighter so that he can look up. 

“Hardly.” His laughter is short, warm and teasing in return as he points out: “Everyone is a poet when they talk about love.” 

Solas’s fingers against his scalp send quick, gentle thrills up and down Ian’s spine. It is a pleasant sensation, and almost distracts him from the second question posed. His response is delayed as he drags his teeth across his lip, “I’m–I’m a little surprised you have to ask. I would have–I think that it–it seems clear enough, to me…”

* * *

It is no simple task getting Ian to accept a compliment. He resists as oil resists water, twisting flattery ‘til it suits him or skirting it by entirely. Although he laughs with good humour, there is a melancholic edge to his humility. “Clearly you have not read Varric’s romance serial,” he says, shrugging off the deflection as best as he is able.

His attention falls to Ian’s lips, tracing them with brazen intent before they flit back to his eyes. “I would call it a matter for debate,” he muses. “You harbour a light within you which shames stars, what brilliance you behold in me may be a pale shadow of my admiration, a reflection of what I most adore.” As he combs the hair from Ian’s face it descends again, stubborn as the elf whose crown it adorns.

“But that is _my_ perspective, I am more curious as to yours.”

* * *

“I tried.” Ian admits, grin lopsided. “It…wasn’t to my taste. Though I suppose that’s–that’s not required of poetry.” 

Teasing Varric is only the distraction of a moment, however. Solas’s gaze locks with his own, and the compliment he offers threatens to burn the vallaslin from Ian’s cheeks. His teeth come down across his lips as he feels his breath falter, and he looks away quickly, unable to bear the eye contact any longer. 

The time it takes for his breath to return feels like an age, and he stumbles over his answer. “If–You–Hah. Now who–now who speaks like the poets?” Ian shakes his head slowly, trying a different set of words to give his thoughts meaning. “I lack–I lack the presence of the moon. You…you carry brilliance wherever you go. If you have noticed that I–that I shine, surely you must have realized that it is because I am so–it is because I am so delighted by your nearness. And–” 

Solas’s hand moves to push the hair from Ian’s face once again, and Ian reaches up to catch at his fingers, pulling them instead to his lips as he raises his eyes to meet Solas’s.

“–And your attention.”

* * *

There is reverence in the arc of his hand guided to Ian’s lips which would put any supplicant to shame. His heart stills and quickens, and would stop entirely if Ian willed it so. Perhaps it is he who is the moon, and Ian the flower, yet why when Ian’s eyes turn upon him does pink bloom across his cheeks like spring? He has never felt smaller than when held in Ian’s gaze, and somehow never more significant. Like the first blossom on the branch of a tree, held between the hands but never plucked.

“You do yourself too little credit,” he says in quiet protest. “If truth be told, I have never seen your like before. I suspect the heavens could not contain you if they tried.”

He remembers the first time they spoke of colours, when he looked into Ian’s eyes and saw love staring back. Be it his own burgeoning affection he saw reflected that day or Ian’s compassion for the world around them, there is no mistaking its presence now. Solas’ gaze swoops to where their hands meet, pulling gently so they lay together upon his chest.

“And you have captured more than my attention.”

* * *

The back of Solas’s hand is warm against his lips, and the sensation of their touch sparks similarly behind Ian’s ribs. Warmth blossoms in his chest at Solas’s words, spreading outward, and his already heated cheeks blister. 

He watches, the world slowing in an incredible and intimate way, as Solas pulls their hands to his heart. It pulses against Ian’s palm, and he closes his eyes, listening to his own heartbeat as he measures Solas’s. They beat almost in alignment, overlapping each other in a rhythm that echoes the gentle emotion of Solas’s words and the soft adoration that still burns at the tips of Ian’s ears. 

They sit together for a moment, feeling and listening and breathing. When Ian opens his eyes again, it is to study Solas’s expression. A quick assessment, and then he leans forward, his unoccupied hand extending to catch Solas beneath the chin, lifting his face so that their lips might meet.

* * *

Silence follows, yet Solas does not find himself missing the assurance of Ian’s voice. No meaning in his manner floats to him from across the Veil, yet he finds it all the same. Over the weeks and months they’d come to know each other Ian read to him like a second language. The flutter of his eyes and sweet parting of his lips imparts as much meaning as the dreams they share.

He regards Ian with a lovestruck look. The hot iron ends of his ears simmer down to a vivid pink before he opens his eyes to level their gazes. Affections wells in his chest, large and loud, and leaving room for little else. The world around them grows dull and distant, no more than a faint hum drowned out by the thrum of his own heart in his ears.

There is no question in the hand that guides them closer. Solas is led gladly, the hand which holds Ian’s squeezing with delight. He indulges the months-old desire, satisfying the thought that had dogged him the last time they spoke of colours. In the evenings after he asked himself what it might be like to kiss him, and wondered which colours Ian might find hidden in his eyes as their noses brushed at the tips.

For him, the world is awash in the gentle gold of Ian’s gaze, and when his eyes flutter closed so their lips may meet in earnest the stars that burst across the backs of his lids align with the freckles scattered across Ian’s cheeks.

**Author's Note:**

> This thread is a continuation of [this previous roleplay]() and was inspired by a Tumblr ask. Ian is written and imagined by TheBraveHobbit / theshirallen. Solas is written by myself on theharellan.


End file.
